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comments:

Aneesh! Good article - bringing out problems that students have at university site. But ASP alone may not explain why you are having problems with firefox. ASP is a server side scripting technology - it has no effect at the browser. If designed properly, it should be possible to write an ASP page that works flawlessly at any browser (Orkut is on ASPX). The problem really is what Sasi sir points out- non adherence to W3C (World wide web consortium) standards. W3C is the organization that defines web standards like HTML, CSS etc. Its like all other web browsers follow W3C while IE follows a totally different standard. Good developers write W3C compliant pages and tweak them to work on IE, while half trained ones write pages that work only on IE. That may be what happened with University.

If you believe that a complaint is going to solve it- it will be less than half your worries (and theirs). The site is one of the crappiest I have ever seen. There is a well known vulnerability that allows others to view your marklist without requiring your password (that which they tried to avoid). I once did a rudimentary vulnerability check on the site. It was just short a cracking attempt - but if somebody wanted to crack it, the site would collapse in less than 5 minutes. The site does critical operations like input sanitation right at the browser using javascript (baaad design!). I was able to turn off javascript and pass a spurious input. The server threw up an error with all the internal details - including about HTML and SQL servers. Forcing this kind of error is the essential first step in a site cracking. I didn't proceed any further- but just imagine someone passing some spurious SQL query. They have tons of student data on the server just waiting to be mauled on!

So how do you expect a team that can't even ensure basic security to ensure W3C compliance? Its not so much about arrogance as it is about incompetence. Having said so much- I am not not trying to discourage you. I can empathize with you. Its annoying when somebody blames your choice instead of their own incompetence. Its even worse when it is about something important as student registration. Finally, as an epilogue- I can no longer access my student details (incl marklist). This happens every time- albeit to different students!

An error I faced:I gave all details, uploaded photo and sign.In the end when i hit confirm, it appeared there is an invalid character in the first page. And i didn't get my username and password.No option to go back.And I can't register again too. I showed "NAME ALREADY REGISTERED".I registered again with a fake name. Then edited it and gave my own name An idea given by my friend. He used the same idea too. And many others.Also my email id anoop.ananth90@gmail.com was shown INVALID due to the presence of dot.Lots more of bugs are there. Lots of my friends experiencing.

YEAH.. I AGREE THAT THERE ARE LOTS OF PROBLEMS IN OUR ONLINE REGISTRATION AS IT IS INTRODUCED AT FIRST TIME. ON THE FIRST 2 DAYS THE MAIN PROBLEM WAS THAT THE PAGE SHOWED ERROR WARNING WHEN WE PUT SPACE IN OUR NAME. WHEN SOME OF THE ENG STUDENTS INCLUDING ME CALLED THE COMPUTER ADMISNISTRATOR OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE AND BROUGHT THE PROBLEM INTO NOTICE THE PROBLEM GET RESOLVED LATER..... LIKE WISE THE MAIN OTHER PROBLEM WAS THAT IN THE OPTION NAME OF THE BOARD AT FIRST THERE WAS ONLY TWO OPTIONS : KERALA STATE BOARD, CBSE AND ICSE. NO OPTION FOR STUDENTS WHO COMPLETED THEIR PLUS TWO IN OTHER STATES LIKE ME. AFTER TWO DAYS THE PROBLEM GOT RESOLVED BY INTORDUCING OTHER OPTION "OTHERS". SO THERE R SO MANY PROBLEMS ....IF U CONTACT THE RIGHT AUTHORITY THEN THEIR RESPONSE IS GOOD.